- Burt Rainey: Just wearing that hood doesn't change your voice, Walker. Am I supposed to be afraid of you because your face is covered up? It'll take more than these sheets you're wearing to hide the fact that you're mean, frightened little people, or you wouldn't be here, desecrating the cross.
- Charlie Barr: In the name of the imperial Klan...
- Burt Rainey: Don't give me that Halloween routine.
- Faulkner: Let's not fool ourselves, Charlie. You know the boys. Without those white hoods to hide in, they're no heroes. That's why they need the hoods in the first place. Put them under fire, legal fire, and you'll see a rat race like you never seen before! They'll squeal, they'll cry, they'll run like rabbits!
- Charlie Barr: Don't force me to show you how we handle people! We're the law here! We're the judges and the jury!
- Marsha Mitchell: I'm no hero. I'm scared! That's what you wanted, and that's the way it is. Yeah, I'm afraid of what you might do to me. But if I ever get out of here, I'm gonna tell, and there's nothing you can do that'll stop me!
- Cliff Rummel: I can't show the new summer line without a model.
- Marsha Mitchell: Show 'em on hangers.
- Cliff Rummel: Hangers haven't got what you've got!
- Burt Rainey: Hear that yellin' out there? That's the Klan! They just found out that law and order can't touch them. You did that when you let them off! They're runnin' wild! They're gonna rip up the old laws and make new ones! They're gonna do every rotten thing they can think of doing!
- Burt Rainey: Complicated, isn't it? Here we are trying to find a bunch of murderers. When we find them, who will they be? Probably friends of ours, fellows we went to school with.
- Charlie Barr: I'll give you a tip, young fellow. Never go off half-cocked. Who's to say the Klan's involved? You got a witness? Don't drag people into anything unless you got solid legal evidence. Everything that happens in these small towns, right away they blame it on the Klan.
- Burt Rainey: You a member of the Klan, Walters?
- Walt Walters: I used to be.
- Burt Rainey: You're kidding.
- Walt Walters: Fact.
- Burt Rainey: Why'd you join?
- Walt Walters: I thought it was something to do good. You know, help people. Get them out of trouble, keep them out. I wanted to help people.
- Burt Rainey: What do you know about that. Why'd you quit?
- Walt Walters: I found out it was a lot of bunk. Just a racket. Bunch of hoodlums dressed up in sheets.
- Charlie Barr: You have to think of all the good the Klan does. You have to think of what it would be like down here without us. Without us, a girl like you wouldn't be safe on the street at night. You have to think of that.
- Charlie Barr: l'm not running. I worked hard for what I got. You think l'm gonna throw it all away, like garbage? I don't have to, because Rainey won't get his indictment. Nobody's gonna talk. Nobody.
- Mrs. Rainey: [about her son] You know, the last time I didn't. But the next time he runs for anything, l'm going to vote for him.
- Reporter: Many times today on the streets, in the restaurant, in the hotel, people have come up to us and asked us not to judge their whole town by the brutal, criminal action of hoodlums last night.
- Reporter: These decent individuals, sincerely upset by the ugly flare-up of violence which has brought sudden national prominence to their small town, tell us the great majority of people here, 75, 85% of them, want no part of the Ku Klux Klan or mob rule.
- Marsha Mitchell: [to Lucy] What are you working at a joint like this for? And why are you working, anyway?
- Charlie Barr: The boys are just having a little harmless fun, Miss Mitchell.
- Marsha Mitchell: Is this what you call harmless?
- Charlie Barr: You got us wrong. We're not as bad as people say.
- Marsha Mitchell: No, you're worse. Give me the key, Lucy.
- Charlie Barr: Like I said, the Klan does a lot of good around here.
- Marsha Mitchell: l've seen what the Klan does.
- Marsha Mitchell: Look, l'm trying to get packed and get dressed, do you mind?
- Hank Rice: Go on. Go right ahead. Don't mind me. l've seen girls before. I bet you sure do look good in a bathing suit.
- Hank Rice: You know, they say that a girl's figure's her fortune. You sure got your money invested in the right places.
- Hank Rice: A girl like you have been around. You know what it's all about.
- Marsha Mitchell: You're hurting me!
- Hank Rice: Some women like to be hurt.
- Charlie Barr: This woman is to be punished. She has defied the power and majesty of the Klan. She must be taught a lesson, unless she relents. For the last time, will you obey the Klan?
- Charlie Barr: Get it straight. You say it was the Klan, and I promise you he'll hang. Give them something to go on and they'll be howling for blood. And if it comes to that, he's their meat.
- Hank Rice: Outsiders. That's who killed him. Outsiders, hiding in Klan robes. And then they blame us. We're lynchers. You wait and see, when it all comes out, it was outsiders.
- Burt Rainey: You think you're doing right. Well, I think you're doing exactly what the Klan wants you to.
- Reporter: Many of these people here are seriously concerned about the good name of their town, about its future. As you look at them, you can see the deep shame that they feel. Many of these people also feel, however, these respected folk, a serious resentment. A resentment against the press. Against outsiders. Against the national coverage that this inquest is receiving.
- Marsha Mitchell: Look, Cliff, don't you ever give up? You made a pitch in Baltimore, a wrong play in Mobile, and you fouled out in Atlanta. Cliff, in any league, three strikes is out.
- George Athens: [to the man at the jukebox] Take out the jungle-rhythm record.
- Cora Athens: Leave it in!
- George Athens: It always gives me a migraine headache. Out!
- Cora Athens: Brings in the nickels.
- Cliff Rummel: You're a good girl, I know, and I respect it highly. But do you have to be so fanatic about it?
- George Athens: You didn't marry me, you married the business.
- Cora Athens: And we're very happy together.
- Sheriff Art Jaeger: It was the Klan. What about it?
- Burt Rainey: Well, a man got killed. Something's got to be done about it.
- Sheriff Art Jaeger: All right, tell me what. l'll do what you say. That's what l'm here for. You wanna start naming names, Mr. Rainey? l'll pull them in, if you name 'em.
- Burt Rainey: That's not good enough, Art.
- Sheriff Art Jaeger: Well, that's all there is. I take orders. You give me an order, l'll do it. You know anybody in Rock Point who will go to the inquest for you and testify against the Klan? Tell me, and l'll bring 'em in. If you don't, and you don't, stop kicking my men around for not doing what you can't do yourself.
- Burt Rainey: I know. But every time someone from New York, Washington, or points north, starts poking his nose in our affairs, we holler foul. Well, if we don't want the meddling, one of these days we're gonna have to start cleaning up our own messes. You and me. All of us.
- Lucy Rice: You can sleep on the couch, Marsha. See, this opens up into a day bed. Well, it's really more comfortable than it looks.
- Marsha Mitchell: Looks all right.
- Lucy Rice: Of course, I could ask Hank to sleep on the couch and then you could sleep in bed with me.
- Marsha Mitchell: I just saw a man murdered.
- Lucy Rice: Murdered? You're kidding?
- Marsha Mitchell: They dragged him out of the jail, and then they beat him and then murdered him.
- Lucy Rice: Who? When?
- Marsha Mitchell: Just now. A whole mob of them. A gang. And they were all dressed in hoods.
- Lucy Rice: Hoods?
- Sheriff Art Jaeger: How far did you get eight months ago with that lynching?
- Burt Rainey: About as far as l'll get with this one.
- Ambulance Driver: What'd this guy wanna come down here for in the first place? What they don't seem to understand is we folks get along all right. So long as nobody starts interfering with us in Washington. Points north.
- Burt Rainey: Adams didn't come from Washington. He worked for a paper in Birmingham, and that's not north.
- Burt Rainey: Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. It's a shame Adam's body keeps getting in the way.
- Walt Walters: I don't know who's the guiltier, the one who commits the crime or the one who just stands by and refuses to do anything about it.
- Burt Rainey: Sometimes, I sit around for hours trying to figure that one out.